SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.
— Oregon’s athletic department raises $17 million a year. If it didn’t start the arms race, its facilities show it at least won it. Its uniforms are so trendy, they’re sold in Paris. And Monday night, in the Arizona desert, the Ducks will play in their first national championship football game.

How in the world did a middling school such as Oregon, whose tradition was based more on a Disney character than a Heisman winner, go from middle of the road to king of the road? Who gets credit?

For starters, Colorado.

The date was Jan. 1, 1996. CU had just thrashed Oregon 38-6 in the Cotton Bowl, the Ducks’ second straight beatdown in a Jan. 1 bowl. At a banquet a few days later, an Oregon booster approached Mike Bellotti, who was Oregon’s coach at the time.

“He asked me, ‘What do we need to do to get to the next level?’ ” Bellotti said last week. “I said an indoor practice facility. He said, ‘How soon can we get it done?’ I said, ‘Well, we’ve got to do some fundraising and we’ve got to do some . . .’ He said, ‘No, no, no. How soon can we get it done?‘ “

Sure enough, in two years, just in time for the 1998 season, Oregon had a $1 million indoor practice facility, courtesy of Phil Knight, Oregon booster and Nike’s chairman of the board. In the following 13 years, Oregon built the best facilities in the country and made it to Monday’s BCS title game.

How do you go from one of the pack to one of a kind? How does Colorado go from the bowels of the Big 12 Conference to battling Oregon at the top of the Pac-12? Find a booster like Phil Knight.

They aren’t found at the local Elks Lodge. No Colorado alumnus is worth $11 billion, is a former athlete at the school and is one of its most rabid fans. But the power of one wealthy, loyal booster can change the course of an entire athletic department and, thus, a university.

What has Knight meant to Oregon?

Said Bellotti, “What is the sun to life on Earth?”

Fancy facilities

The amount Knight has given to Oregon has never been confirmed. Knight is too embarrassed by the thanks he gets to say, and Oregon accountants don’t have calculators that go that high. Estimates are listed at about $200 million, but if you look at all he has given it would seem to double that.

After the practice facility came $90 million for the renovation of Autzen Stadium in 2002; the $42 million Jacqua Center, an academic center primarily for athletes; and $100 million for bonding that paid for the initial cost of Matthew Knight Arena, the $200 million, state-of-the-art basketball venue that opens Thursday. Knight isn’t through, either. Next up is the $41 million, six-floor expansion of the football facility that will wrap around the Casanova Center and open in 2013.

Allowing one man to contribute so much dangerously tiptoes over university boundaries, a debate that pops up in Oregon’s halls of academia. But Oregon’s movers and shakers aren’t complaining.

Neither is Oklahoma State. If Knight is the king of donors, Oklahoma State’s T. Boone Pickens is on the royal court. His $228 million in donations has turned the Cowboys’ former glorified high school football stadium into Boone Pickens Stadium, a 60,200-seat palace ringed with luxury boxes. It’s one of the best recruiting tools in the country.

Knight and Pickens built bandwagons, and other boosters have hopped on. In 10 years, the number of Oregon donors has jumped from 4,800 to more than 10,000 and annual donations have risen from $2.5 million 20 years ago to $17 million, not counting Knight’s. At Oklahoma State, Pickens contributed a major part of $670 million raised in a $1 billion university fundraising campaign.

“The inspirational nature of what he’s done has inspired a lot of other people to give at levels that they’ve never even thought about before,” Oklahoma State athletic director Mike Holder said of Pickens. “What it did was he gave people hope.”

Fashion statement

One month after that Cotton Bowl loss to CU, Knight called his two right-hand men, Tinker Hatfield, vice president of design and special projects, and creative director Michael Doherty, into his office. Knight, a miler at Oregon (Class of ’59), wanted ideas. How can they get Oregon over the hump?

They found a solution: Do a complete makeover of the Ducks’ image, from colors to logo.

“We see the University of Oregon as a willing partner and collaborator to test out some things,” said Hatfield, a Ducks pole vaulter from 1972-76. “Not too many schools have been interested in that. There’s so much tenacious holding on to tradition. Oregon never had as much tradition to begin with.”

Out went the Donald Duck logo. In came the new “O,” shaped like an aerial view of Autzen. Out went the emerald-green and lemon-yellow uniforms. In came a tougher forest green that has morphed into black, silver and a wardrobe of winged uniforms that booted poor Donald off the national radar.

They spent $500,000 on a billboard of quarterback Joey Harrington on a New York skyscraper. Suddenly, high school running backs in Texas and linemen in Los Angeles noticed. As a cover of a 2003 Sports Illustrated blazed after Oregon beat Michigan: “Rich, Cool and 4-0 (Quack, Quack).”

Cash for campus

But what cost glory? Some at Oregon aren’t pleased that the most posh buildings on campus are for athletes. Many wonder why projects, such as the Knight Arena, aren’t put out for bid. The architect for the basketball arena was the same one used to design the Nike campus in Beaverton, Ore.

As a result, in 2008 the state board of higher education required all universities to secure approval of construction projects of more than $5 million even if a private party pays.

“It’s only because (Knight) wants to get it done,” Hatfield said. “He doesn’t care who the architect is. He doesn’t even care if he’s the one who chose the architect. He just wants to make sure that some decision is made because we all know that in these state-run institutions things take forever.”

Knight declined an interview request, but his backers say he also built a $10 million law school in 1999 and helped fund a $27 million renovation of the school library in 1994. He has endowed all campus scholarships and buildings on campus.

Athletic department officials point out hHis influence on hirings and firings doesn’t go much beyond reading the sports section. “We have a lot more donors giving $1,000 who sometimes dictate and want to have more say,” Bartko said.

While Oregon plays before the world Monday, Bohn will continue his search for Colorado’s closest thing to Phil Knight. Holder has some advice for him.

“The best thing to do is become friends long before they give a lot of money,” he said. “The moral of the story is everybody’s important.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Tyreek Hill didn’t know what to do when he started hearing thousands of people in Arrowhead Stadium chanting his name, even as he stood all alone on the frozen turf waiting for the punt.